A fishing boat ran aground in Ciboure (Pyrénées-Atlantique) on the night of Thursday to Friday and, according to authorities, two Senegalese crew members are missing in the sea, which was churned up by strong waves.
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The ship, traveling between the Arcachon basin and Saint-Jean-de-Luz, ran aground near the Socoa dike with three people on board, according to the department's prefecture.
Shortly after 1:45 a.m., the Socoa semaphore received “a distress call” from the boat and was then detected by its automatic identification system, but without “visual contact.” He was then spotted from land by a fire patrol, which then reported “two people in the sea and debris,” writes the Atlantic Sea Prefecture (Premar) in another press release.
A 40-year-old Frenchman, the captain, was rescued and hospitalized in Bayonne, but two sailors were still missing mid-morning. They are of Senegalese nationality and are between 30 and 58 years old, according to the Pyrénées-Atlantiques prefecture.
Although significant resources were deployed (firefighters and coastal rescuers, divers, drones, helicopters and a launch from the National Sea Rescue Society), the search was complicated by deteriorating weather conditions and strong winds.
“The boat ran aground on rocks near the Socoa fortress,” Eneko Aldana-Douat, mayor of Ciboure, told AFP. “It has been decades since we had such a serious accident.”